Week 38 - April 24, 2017

Hiya, fam! 

Good to hear from you guys.  This week went by way too fast!  It's good to be in my new area, I am loving Glasgow City!  It's massive and all we do is GQ the Uni and the City Centro all day, back to what I love!  I, also, hit my 9 months this week, I swear it was last week that I was writing saying I hit my 8 months.  Time just keeps picking up!  But anyways, I'll go through my week now.

Tuesday:  We didn't have a district meeting, so we just GQ'd the entire day!  I got to say bye to some of the members in Lisburn as well.

Wednesday:  My last day in Lisburn.  I had to say bye to Kirstie and Mannie.  I was sad to leave them, but excited for their futures and to hear about how much they will progress and grow in the church.  I packed up my bags and David had us over for dinner again.  He brought his friend who had escaped Iraq to become a Christian, and it was really cool to hear his story.  How blessed are we to be able to worship God without the fear of being killed for it, such a humbling experience. 

Thursday:  We hopped on the train in the morning and headed over to the City.   I said goodbye to Elder Nelson, what an amazing guy.  We didn't serve a ton of time together, but we had some amazing experiences and always were laughing and had great success.  I'll see him again nay worries :)  I got on the bus with the rest of the Elders leaving Ireland and we got to the docks then took the boat over to Scotland.  After the boat, we took another bus to Glasgow!  I met Elder Wang and we took my bags back to our flat.  I am in the Glasgow Chinatown flat as it's called hahah.  I'll take some pics of it this week, it's nice!  We didn't have a lot of time left in the day, but we GQ'd for a while.  I'll tell you guys about my comp.  

Elder Wang is from a small town outside of Beijing, China.  He is a convert to the church! About two years ago, some family friends began to teach him about God and about the church.  He flew to Hong Kong and was baptized and then decided to come out and serve a mission.  He has been out for about a year now, nobody in his family but his mum is a member.  He was able to baptize her before he left.  His English is pretty good, but not perfect.  He just goes to town with the Chinese people.  I just stand there and smile and say a few words and he talks to them.  He might be the hardest working missionary I have ever met.  I'm excited to serve with him! 

Friday:  We had a full day of finding and I got to know the city a little bit better.  Our area is shared with 12 other teams.  It's a wee bit competitive, and we literally just have the entire city to find in.  We hit up the University Of Glasgow in the morning because there are a TON of Chinese people here!!  Later on we went into the city centre, I love it.  There's just thousands of people from all over the place walking around and a bunch of missionaries all GQing and having fun!  We got an advantage though because Elder Wang can speak Chinese and they all talk to him!  In the evening, we went to the Church for two baptisms the sisters were having.  We went out for ice cream afterwards with all the Chinese.  They love me because I am American and tall, its hilarious.  They have really broken English, but they understand everything I say well!  It's fun trying to learn how to speak Mandarin, and they are the funniest people I know.

(This place is massive, I LOVE IT.  I haven't got a ton of pics yet, but I will get more this week.  We are going on a hike today as well, so that will be fun!  Here are a few of the city.)

Saturday:  Another day of finding!  We were able to sit down and teach a Chinese girl named Leslie (Oh, btw, they just create English names, usually after flowers haha)  We taught her the Plan of Salvation and about the Godhead, she loved it!  There was another baptism in the evening the other sisters were having, and we invited her to come along.  We GQ'd some more and got some potentials for the week ahead.  Leslie came with us to the baptism and said she felt a peace afterwards that she hadn't felt before.  We invited her to church for the next day.

Sunday:  The Glasgow Ward is a bit different then other wards.  Since we share the building with the Springboig Ward, our church starts at 10, but we start with Elders Quorum, then Gospel Principles, then Sacrament.  Leslie was able to come along to church.  Gospel Principles is divided into two classes, an English class and a Mandarin class.  All the other missionaries go to the English class and I go with Elder Wang who teaches the Mandarin class hahaha.  I don't understand a single word of what anyone is saying, so I just kind of zone out and study on my own.  But it was good!  We were able to teach Leslie after church with another recent convert named Cox.  She committed to being baptized on the 4th of May!  WOO!  After that, we just went finding some more in the city.  We had an on the spot lesson with a man named Ross from Canada, it was good.  We taught the Plan of Salvation and he said he would meet up some more with us this week. 

So that was my week, pretty fun.  We are gonna go hard and find a bunch of new people to teach, I am excited to see how successful we can become as we put our faith in God and do our part to find those prepared to receive the gospel.  I love you guys and will talk to you next week!  

Elder Copeland

OH BTW: Here is my new Address!!!  Send me letters plz!  You can send packages to the mission home--it's not far away :)  Thanks! 

2 Tamshill Street, Flat 0/1  

Glasgow G20 9QT

Scotland